Eurosceptics should not barrack the PM’s speech when it comes: they should
bank it

Since David Cameron has had to postpone his speech on Europe because of the terrible events in Algeria, I propose that he now keeps us waiting just a little longer. He should deliver it on January 29. Then it will be 50 years to the day since General de Gaulle, the president of France, vetoed British entry into the European Economic Community. It would be a fitting moment to mark a new course.

De Gaulle understood Britain better than most of our own leaders. A week earlier in 1963, he had signed the Élysée Treaty, enshrining friendship with France’s former deadly enemy, Germany. He knew that Britain would never engage in the sort of full-hearted partnership that he had just forged. Britain would not fully sacrifice her independence to create a new European political entity.

He was right. Our entry into Europe, and the referendum in 1975 about whether to stay in, would only be won, pro-European British leaders believed, if the loss of sovereignty could be played down. “Europe” was sold on its alleged practical advantages. But its founding fathers were intent on creating a new political order.

By temperament, Mr Cameron is one of those pragmatic British politicians who instinctively do not like confronting the kernel of any question. That is why most Eurosceptics do not trust him. But this makes it all the more significant that he now feels he must make this speech which fate keeps postponing. The main drafter is his chief of staff Ed Llewellyn, who is almost a bogeyman among Eurosceptics. Naturally, some suspect a trap. But is it not possible, if even the pragmatists and Europhile fellow-travellers recognise the problem, that we might be getting somewhere?

The first British prime minister to protest at the way things were going was, of course, Margaret Thatcher. Her Bruges speech in 1988, half-way in time between de Gaulle’s “Non” and Mr Cameron’s promised oration, was a cry of pain against the move to a United States of Europe. It was also a prescient call to see Europe as much bigger than a tight little club of its Western nations.

Bruges changed the weather. What it did not do, however, was change the policy, even at home. The “ever closer union” enshrined in the founding Treaty of Rome rolled forward. Britain complained, but half-heartedly. Mrs Thatcher was thrown out of office on the initiative of pro-European colleagues. Even the concept of a “two-speed” Europe, so disapproved of by Euro-purists, accepted the idea of ever closer union – same destination, just an argument about pace. The European caravan trundled on.

The creation of the euro, and the inevitable crisis into which it has sunk, have changed that. Most EU countries joined the euro: we didn’t. Most eurozone countries see the solution to the crisis as economic union, banking union, fiscal union – political union in all, perhaps, but name. Britain will not be part of that union. Even if Mr Cameron longed for it (which he doesn’t), he would have no hope of achieving it. So what he is talking about – or will talk about if only that speech gets delivered – is not two speeds. It is a fork in the road. This is a recognition, half a century too late, of the difference which de Gaulle understood. Mr Cameron will be saying to European colleagues: “Please accommodate this fundamental difference. If you do not, we’re off.”

Like most Eurosceptics, I do not feel particularly confident about what happens next. Part of the Coalition Agreement – though naturally it is not so expressed – is that this Government will do nothing about Europe. Since it finds itself swamped by the most momentous period of European history since the fall of the Berlin Wall, this is, to put it mildly, a pity. But there it is. So all that Mr Cameron is doing is telling his party, his country, the EU and the world – in that order of priority – what he would do in the currently rather unlikely event of his being prime minister with an overall majority from 2015. He is electioneering, not governing.

I also recognise that there is no great basis of trust here. It is possible – though I favour a more charitable explanation – that David Cameron is the Harold Wilson of our age. Wilson, you will remember, also led a Eurosceptic party (Labour). Faced with internal disunity on the subject, he claimed to have “renegotiated” Britain’s EEC membership terms in 1975 and called an “in/out” referendum on the back of that. “I have never been emotionally a Europe man,” he said, which, with his corkscrew pragmatism, was his way of advocating a “Yes” vote. By two to one, the British voters obliged. Note that Mr Cameron always makes a point of saying what a Eurosceptic he is, and be a little wary.

But it would nevertheless be a mistake to trash the speech which Mr Cameron intends to make. It would be mean-spirited, incomprehensible to the public and tactically foolish. Much, much better to bank it. He is going much further than any British prime minister since we entered the EEC – good. He is going much further than he originally intended – better.

It puzzles me that Eurosceptics are arguing in such detail about what a referendum should say and when, exactly, it should be introduced. These questions matter very much, but they cannot be answered yet. Anyone who gets stuck on a wording now will probably have cause to regret it. People answer a question depending on the surrounding circumstances. We do not yet know what those surrounding circumstances will be, so we should not frame the precise question.

In 1975, the question on the ballot paper was “Do you think the United Kingdom should stay in the European Community (the Common Market)?” It was the classic in/out question and, from an anti-European point of view, the answer went the wrong way. Eurosceptics should not set a trap for themselves. They should register the fact that the supporters of European integration are almost all opposed to a referendum. They should note the huffs of protest from the increasingly elderly ranks of the usual suspects – Lord Heseltine, Kenneth Clarke, the CBI – and be quietly pleased. They should not taunt Mr Cameron and try to catch him out; they should try to subject him to the most agreeable possible form of house arrest.

Unfortunately, the institutional forces of greater European integration remain much stronger than their opponents. They have the political and legal power, the banks, the bureaucracy, the vested interest of the elites, the backing of President Obama, and even – though they have managed to lose billions of it – the money. In the eurozone, they seem intent on pushing towards a United States of Europe. They will probably manage it. Then it will fail, and great will be the fall thereof.

But what they lack much more than at any time in their history is the most sustaining of all powers – the power of an idea. In her Bruges speech, Mrs Thatcher made an interesting appeal to her European allies: “The fact is that things are going our way… freedom is on the offensive, a peaceful offensive the world over, for the first time in my lifetime.” Despite her Euroscepticism, she saw European leadership as a rising power in the world. Her successors could not possibly say the same thing now. The European Union is becoming an economic, political, cultural and demographic backwater – a tourist destination, not a great power. This is very sad, but also, for those of us who want our country back, an opportunity.